New Zealand Spinach, Tetragonia

Also tetragonia, warrigal greens, Botany Bay greens, New Zealand ice plant

I’m going to take the liberty of calling this plant tetragonia, to help dispel any expectation that it will be like spinach. The common names tetragona, tetragone, and tetragonia exist in other languages—and there is a precedent for change. After Captain Cook and his botanist, Joseph Banks, returned to England from New Zealand with the plant, it developed a small following as “Botany Bay greens.”

However, Alan Davidson tells us, “Botany Bay was originally going to be called Sting-ray’s Harbour, since several large sting-rays had been caught and eaten there. But as Banks recorded in his diary: ‘We had with it a dish of the leaves of tetragonia cornuta [as the plant was classified at the time] boil’d, which eat as well as spinage or very near it.’ This and other botanical discoveries prompted the change of name” (The Oxford Companion to Food).